Abstinence only sex education. (Potentially NSFW)

IanExMachina

(My girlfriend linked me to a very interesting New York Times Article about US sex education here.)

It doesn't seem like it is very educational about sex at all, rather more focused on pushing values upon the child.

Also as mentioned in the article it appears that the majority of US sex education fails to mention pleasure, which is pretty remiss.

(Personally my sex ed was pretty liberal they talked about orgasms pleasure and stuff and recommended contraception, morning after pills etc etc. Although this is probably due to there being a cultural differences between the UK and US.)

Also a 'lovely' abstinence based sex education video:

Gelzo

Health class in the states is pretty much garbage, yeah.

ClockworkUniverse

My sex education teacher didn't realize it was possible to have sex standing up.

IanExMachina

^ 

Really

That is pretty terrible due to giving such poor education to people who will undoubtedly need it.

ClockworkUniverse

I haven't needed it yet :<

InsanityAddict

I don't have any beef with mentioning abstinence as a possible choice in your sex-life-it would go hand-in-hand with a class discussing peer pressure, how pop-culture and media feed you certain images of sex, and that making different choices, whether it's deviant kinks or waiting till marriage, is something you have to accept.

The moment a school uses sex-ed to scare people into an ideology(says a lot about the legitimacy of an ideology if you need to resort to that), it stops fulfilling the purpose of the class(statistics shows abstinence-only works like shit) and thus they can only get their gubbermint jewgolds back if they needly rename said class a religious diversity project.

gentlemanorcus

Nobody pays attention to the sex education classes anyway.

ClockworkUniverse

My class did, so we could make fun of it.

Malkavian

Maybe if there was actual sex education going on they would.

gentlemanorcus

^^ That too. 

^ I doubt it.

I'm not saying its not bad that schools are teaching that sex= unwanted pregnancies and STDs and the like, but it's not really going to affect anyone but the most naive students. Pretty much everyone knows the classes are completely stupid.

Malkavian

so wait, you doubt a bunch of teenagers who are definitely interested in sex wouldn't pay attention to things teaching them how to do it right?

IanExMachina

^^

I sincerely doubt that all the students have the full range of knowledge on the subject, and don't need educating.

gentlemanorcus

^^, ^ They already think they know everything about it. Even if they weren't teaching this "sex is bad" crap, nobody wants to listen to sex education from teachers. 

glennmagusharvey

I have a feeling that sex ed classes follow what is actually a long-standing tradition of teaching one thing to get people to learn something else.

This is nothing new.  See, you can teach kids team sports but they actually learn teamwork.  You can teach kids martial arts but they actually learn discipline.

Here, you teach kids about sexuality (however ineptly) and they learn that the world has much more information to learn from than their school is willing to teach.

gentlemanorcus

^ True. Still, even with sex education classes teaching bullshit like this, it probably means parents will be more willing to take to their kids about it. 

Malkavian

You're forgetting that the reason sex ed is so neutered is because some many parents actually don't want their kids knowing about it.

RedEyedAbyss

But don't they have an opt-out option?

All Nines

I'm glad sex education at my school is tossed into a general Health class. Doesn't make the class overall any less of a joke, but that's for different reasons, and there's really not enough time to push ideologies on the students.

Forzare

Our Health class was pretty much all sex and drugs.

ClockworkUniverse

^Damn, that sounds awesome! Where did you go to school?!

:P

DYRE

All of my sex ed classes were actually just part of a general Health class (except maybe 5th grade).  And I think all my Health classes were just classes where we watched movies all the time...

Forzare

I never payed any attention in Health. Mostly because the tests were insultingly easy and more tests of common sense than anything else.

^^ ohohohoho

RedEyedAbyss

And anything you learn in Health, you learn better in psychology, sociology, and biology. (never getting that image of a vasectomy out of my head)

DYRE

I didn't learn that Mark Wahlberg makes for a really bad boyfriend in any of those other classes, so I dunno what you're talking about.

RedEyedAbyss

Wait, you took psychology or sociology? I only had that as independent studies filler (though with all due respect, cult mentality was one of the most important things I've ever learned about in my life).

V(I will not make that anime joke. I will not make that anime joke)

DYRE

Well, abnormal psych.  So not quite a general psychology class.  I did take a sociology class though, yeah, though I don't think I actually remember anything from it.

gentlemanorcus

-is still in high school-

Sex education is usually just put in as part of Health, though we have a special day where we focus on sex ed and watch a video.

DYRE

(I will not make that anime joke. I will not make that anime joke)

Please do.  Because I'm curious now... >.>

All Nines

I just remembered the part where we watched a video of women giving birth. I chickened out after seeing a bit, though; we had the option of actually watching the births or not in my class. The others weren't so lucky.

RedEyedAbyss

^^Fine. Was Kodomo no Jikan recommended reading?

Gelzo

You could just, turn your head, right?